Ok gang..any thoughts on this issue or non issue?
Oil change reignites debate over GPS trackers - Yahoo! News
Oil change reignites debate over GPS trackers - Yahoo! News
Oil change reignites debate over GPS trackers
- Thread starter OntarioVanMan
- Start date
tough call,,to spy or not to spy on some people. IMHO, we could have an enemy or we do have an enemy within our country with an unusual belief system that publishes this hate infidel belief. Some people might think that we should not support having certain foreign neighbors in America that could have supported the destruction of the the Twin Towers and killing of a few thousand people. Where were the tracking devices on the guys that took pilot training in Florida, that flew the planes into and through the Twin Towers. I forgot to mention the plane that was stopped by heroes in Pa. Hm-mm. There was this country once that did something about Pearl Harbor, Hm-mm. There was this country once that did something at D-Day. whoops,, this country was united once because another country attacked Pearl Harbor, whoops they forgot to kissazz , they just got things done , united they stood and did not divide. wow, weren't they something,,I think it was the old USA. Hmmm. Would the relatives of the deceased Twin Towers want or would like to have had GPS tracking devices on those responsible for all that died on 911.
greg334
Veteran Expediter
Sky, the problem has zero to do with if the person is a terrorist or not. The FISA court can and does issue warrants with those terrorist issues. 9/11 was not an unknown issue, at least one agency knew what was going and we seem to forget the wall of silence was put up to keep our government safe.
IF this isn't a big deal to some, then move to Cuba because it really is. There already has been one ruling on evidence gathered over a four month period which convicted one guy, the appeals judge overturned his conviction because there was too much evidence, but nevertheless if this was the norm, then our privacy is gone.
IF this isn't a big deal to some, then move to Cuba because it really is. There already has been one ruling on evidence gathered over a four month period which convicted one guy, the appeals judge overturned his conviction because there was too much evidence, but nevertheless if this was the norm, then our privacy is gone.
I read it....am still pondering the idea..
I disagree with the judges' contention that the GPS gives the same info surveillance would - visual contact would show WHO was driving the vehicle, which could be a major issue.
Inside our homes and vehicles are basically the last places we even have an expectation of privacy anymore - I pretty much assume I'm on camera any and everywhere else, and I would think the line should be drawn right there.
Inside our homes and vehicles are basically the last places we even have an expectation of privacy anymore - I pretty much assume I'm on camera any and everywhere else, and I would think the line should be drawn right there.
greg334
Veteran Expediter
The article, from the AP.
... By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer Paul Elias, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage.
The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it.
Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property — a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging legal debate over privacy rights.
One federal judge wrote that the widespread use of the device was straight out of George Orwell's novel, "1984".
"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives," wrote Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a blistering dissent in which a three-judge panel from his court ruled that search warrants weren't necessary for GPS tracking.
But other federal and state courts have come to the opposite conclusion.
Law enforcement advocates for the devices say GPS can eliminate time-consuming stakeouts and old-fashioned "tails" with unmarked police cars.
The technology had a starring role in the HBO cops-and-robbers series "The Wire" and police use it to track every type of suspect — from terrorist to thieves stealing copper from air conditioners.
That investigators don't need a warrant to use GPS tracking devices in California troubles privacy advocates, technophiles, criminal defense attorneys and others.
The federal appeals court based in Washington D.C. said in August that investigators must obtain a warrant for GPS in tossing out the conviction and life sentence of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner convicted of operating a cocaine distribution ring.
That court concluded that the accumulation of four-weeks worth of data collected from a GPS on Jones' Jeep amounted to a government "search" that required a search warrant.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg said watching Jones' Jeep for an entire month rather than trailing him on one trip made all the difference between surveilling a suspect on public property and a search needing court approval.
"First, unlike one's movements during a single journey, the whole of one's movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood anyone will observe all those movements is effectively nil," Ginsburg wrote. The state high courts of New York, Washington and Oregon have ruled similarly.
The Obama administration last month asked the D.C. federal appeals court to change its ruling, calling the decision "vague and unworkable" and arguing that investigators will lose access to a tool they now use "with great frequency."
After the D.C. appeals court decision, the 9th Circuit refused to revisit its opposite ruling.
The panel had concluded that agents could have gathered the same information by following Juan Pineda-Moreno, who was convicted of marijuana distribution after a GPS device alerted agents he was leaving a suspected "grow site."
"The only information the agents obtained from the tracking devices was a log of the locations where Pineda-Moreno's car traveled, information the agents could have obtained by following the car," Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for the three-judge panel.
Two other federal appeals court have ruled similarly.
In his dissent, Chief Judge Kozinski noted that GPS technology is far different from tailing a suspect on a public road, which requires the active participation of investigators.
"The devices create a permanent electronic record that can be compared, contrasted and coordinated to deduce all manner of private information about individuals," Kozinksi wrote.
Legal scholars predict the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the issue since so many courts disagree.
George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr said the issue boils down to public vs. private. As long as the GPS devices are attached to vehicles on public roads, Kerr believes the U.S. Supreme Court will decide no warrant is needed. To decide otherwise, he said, would ignore a long line of previous 4th Amendment decisions allowing for warrantless searches as long as they're conducted on public property.
"The historic line is that public surveillance is not covered by the 4th Amendment," Kerr said.
All of which makes Afifi's lawyer pessimistic that he has much of a chance to file a successful lawsuit challenging the FBI's actions. Afifi is represented by Zahra Billoo of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic civil rights group.
Afifi declined comment after spending last week fielding myriad media inquiries after wired.com posted the story of his routine oil change and it went viral on the Internet.
Still, Billoo hopes the discovered GPS tracking device will help publicize in dramatic fashion the issue of racial profiling the lawyer says Arab-Americans routinely encounter.
She said Afifi was targeted because of his extensive ties to the Middle East, which include supporting two brothers who live in Egypt and making frequent overseas trips. His father was a well-known Islamic-American community leader who died last year in Egypt.
"Yasir hasn't done anything to warrant that kind of surveillance," Billoo said. "This was a blatant example of profiling."
... By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer Paul Elias, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage.
The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it.
Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property — a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging legal debate over privacy rights.
One federal judge wrote that the widespread use of the device was straight out of George Orwell's novel, "1984".
"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives," wrote Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a blistering dissent in which a three-judge panel from his court ruled that search warrants weren't necessary for GPS tracking.
But other federal and state courts have come to the opposite conclusion.
Law enforcement advocates for the devices say GPS can eliminate time-consuming stakeouts and old-fashioned "tails" with unmarked police cars.
The technology had a starring role in the HBO cops-and-robbers series "The Wire" and police use it to track every type of suspect — from terrorist to thieves stealing copper from air conditioners.
That investigators don't need a warrant to use GPS tracking devices in California troubles privacy advocates, technophiles, criminal defense attorneys and others.
The federal appeals court based in Washington D.C. said in August that investigators must obtain a warrant for GPS in tossing out the conviction and life sentence of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner convicted of operating a cocaine distribution ring.
That court concluded that the accumulation of four-weeks worth of data collected from a GPS on Jones' Jeep amounted to a government "search" that required a search warrant.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg said watching Jones' Jeep for an entire month rather than trailing him on one trip made all the difference between surveilling a suspect on public property and a search needing court approval.
"First, unlike one's movements during a single journey, the whole of one's movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood anyone will observe all those movements is effectively nil," Ginsburg wrote. The state high courts of New York, Washington and Oregon have ruled similarly.
The Obama administration last month asked the D.C. federal appeals court to change its ruling, calling the decision "vague and unworkable" and arguing that investigators will lose access to a tool they now use "with great frequency."
After the D.C. appeals court decision, the 9th Circuit refused to revisit its opposite ruling.
The panel had concluded that agents could have gathered the same information by following Juan Pineda-Moreno, who was convicted of marijuana distribution after a GPS device alerted agents he was leaving a suspected "grow site."
"The only information the agents obtained from the tracking devices was a log of the locations where Pineda-Moreno's car traveled, information the agents could have obtained by following the car," Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for the three-judge panel.
Two other federal appeals court have ruled similarly.
In his dissent, Chief Judge Kozinski noted that GPS technology is far different from tailing a suspect on a public road, which requires the active participation of investigators.
"The devices create a permanent electronic record that can be compared, contrasted and coordinated to deduce all manner of private information about individuals," Kozinksi wrote.
Legal scholars predict the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the issue since so many courts disagree.
George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr said the issue boils down to public vs. private. As long as the GPS devices are attached to vehicles on public roads, Kerr believes the U.S. Supreme Court will decide no warrant is needed. To decide otherwise, he said, would ignore a long line of previous 4th Amendment decisions allowing for warrantless searches as long as they're conducted on public property.
"The historic line is that public surveillance is not covered by the 4th Amendment," Kerr said.
All of which makes Afifi's lawyer pessimistic that he has much of a chance to file a successful lawsuit challenging the FBI's actions. Afifi is represented by Zahra Billoo of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic civil rights group.
Afifi declined comment after spending last week fielding myriad media inquiries after wired.com posted the story of his routine oil change and it went viral on the Internet.
Still, Billoo hopes the discovered GPS tracking device will help publicize in dramatic fashion the issue of racial profiling the lawyer says Arab-Americans routinely encounter.
She said Afifi was targeted because of his extensive ties to the Middle East, which include supporting two brothers who live in Egypt and making frequent overseas trips. His father was a well-known Islamic-American community leader who died last year in Egypt.
"Yasir hasn't done anything to warrant that kind of surveillance," Billoo said. "This was a blatant example of profiling."
chefdennis
Veteran Expediter
We will never know why it was there other then what his lawyer has said, he was "profiled because he traveled to the mid east had 2 brothers in the Mid east, had a high profile father and it would appear that he himself may have been hugh profile also.
The fact that CAIR is involved, speaks volumes in itself....
As the American people needing to worry about our freedoms being lost, LOL, we are losing them daily to out of control government for far too long...but hey, as we let the gov take care of us, they gain more control and the ability to take and do as they please and they don't care what we think about it at all or even where we think the line should be drawn....they will continue to do as they please....
The fact that CAIR is involved, speaks volumes in itself....
As the American people needing to worry about our freedoms being lost, LOL, we are losing them daily to out of control government for far too long...but hey, as we let the gov take care of us, they gain more control and the ability to take and do as they please and they don't care what we think about it at all or even where we think the line should be drawn....they will continue to do as they please....
Here's some background on the 9th Circuit Court ruling, and why it's so screwed up.
Ninth Circuit Court: Secret GPS Tracking is Legal | Executive Gov
Basically, if you're rich and live in a gated community or can afford to fence in the car in your driveway, you're good to go. Otherwise, the Feds have free and unfettered access to the vehicle in your driveway.
Here's the original Oct 8 article from Wired that started the whole thing.
Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back | Threat Level | Wired.com
Make sure you read Page 2, as the article in its entirety should give you an indication of just how freely a law like this not only could be, but absolutely will be thoroughly abused.
Ninth Circuit Court: Secret GPS Tracking is Legal | Executive Gov
Basically, if you're rich and live in a gated community or can afford to fence in the car in your driveway, you're good to go. Otherwise, the Feds have free and unfettered access to the vehicle in your driveway.
Here's the original Oct 8 article from Wired that started the whole thing.
Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back | Threat Level | Wired.com
Make sure you read Page 2, as the article in its entirety should give you an indication of just how freely a law like this not only could be, but absolutely will be thoroughly abused.
Oh whats to worry about?...
"If you have nothing to hide" and we get the bad guys...
From 2007...
http://www.expeditersonline.com/forum/soapbox/29102-you-guys-whooses.html
"If you have nothing to hide" and we get the bad guys...
From 2007...
http://www.expeditersonline.com/forum/soapbox/29102-you-guys-whooses.html
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AMonger
Veteran Expediter
The correct answer to the demand for the return of the tracker is, "Send me a letter asking for it. Make sure you include a full description of it and its function so I know how to identify it. Otherwise, you might accidentally get my toaster. Oh, and include the bill of sale or receipt to prove ownership." Of course, better than that would have been to attach it to a taxi cab.
Foreign nationals being allowed the privilege of being in the U.S. should be subject to monitoring if it's deemed necessary although if they are deemed enough risk for this monitoring they should be ejected. No warrants, no nothing other than a legitimate concern by law enforcement to monitor them. They aren't protected by the fourth amendment. They aren't citizens. National protection is far more important than hurt feelings. If they don't like it they can go home.
I actually don't have a problem with tracking all non-citizens unless or until they have a permanent resident card. Put an ankle bracelet on them, I say. People all too often come here on a student visa or some other means, and promptly disappear completely off the radar.
However, the 20 year old student in the story is a natural-born US citizen.
However, the 20 year old student in the story is a natural-born US citizen.
AMonger
Veteran Expediter
First of all, the guy in the story is an American. Second, they are indeed protected by the Fourth Amendment, as well as all the rest. SCOTUS has said so explicitly (with a few limited exceptions they carved out, like gun ownership and voting). The Bill of Rights is for everybody in the country who hasn't forfeited their rights. Actually, the Bill of Rights is for everybody on earth, because the BOR is a reflection of human rights. We just can't force all the tyrannical countries to recognize human rights.
As for foreigners, if they can't be trusted with human rights, they shouldn't be let in in the first place.
greg334
Veteran Expediter
I do agree to a point, but I would like to see the elimination of the refugee use and student visas among other things. Closing off the border would help but again this is not the subject of the thread, spying on a US citizen within the borders of the US without a warrant is.
It does not matter who the person is, the real problem is if we go down this path, then we will seriously lose a lot more than just privacy. It is the same issue with the feds pushing for medical records being digital and accessible through different networks, people are being told how great the idea is but in reality it allows me or someone like me to access your medical records - all of them.
So we really want this to happen?
What gains are being made if it does?
Shouldn't we care about if we are being watched?
Actually there is an issue with law enforcement in this case and a lot of others.
Who defines a legitimate concern?
AND who defines surveillance?
An interesting comment was made the other day about law enforcement, in our system they don't have the exclusive right, we all do. So if a citizen wants to monitor someone, they can. Seeing that a citizen is not a government official, the fourth amendment doesn't apply, that is a restriction on the government. This was coming from a Harvard law professor who was answering to the comment about vigilantism and the wild west.
Actually they are, sometimes I don't like it but they are. National protection should start with law enforcement officers at all levels upholding the laws irregardless if they are instructed not to.